The Witcher 2: Killing in the Name

Share.

CD Projekt takes its RPG to the next level.

By Kristan Reed

Three years is a hellishly long time to be kept in suspense, but that's the problem with modern epic videogames: they take a bloody long time to make. Especially when the studio in question, CD Projekt RED, decides to get all ambitious on our asses and develops its own game engine. But big teases that they are, they get us up at 3.30 AM, fly us to freezing Warsaw during the middle of Europe's coldest snap in decades, sit us down and break everyone's hearts by telling us that they're going to keep us on tenterhooks just a little bit longer. The rascals.

"Unfortunately, one of the biggest twists takes place in the prologue," CD Projekt's story designer Jan Bartkowicz reveals. "It basically sets up the universe, and we can't tell you what this is. It's gonna be such a great twist - so we can't give it away." As the game's subtitle says, the game will focus on the mystery of the Assassins of Kings: "The scale of this plot turns out to be way broader than just one king and one kingdom," we're told.

On the plus side, this No Spoilers On Pain Of Death approach means that we get to make various senior members of the team squirm for four solid hours, while they gamely focus on all sorts of other matters that won't go and ruin it for you all but will still tweak your excitement glands sufficiently. In summary, Assassins of Kings is going to be "a bigger game," where "the scale of events is greater."

There's none more moody than the Witcher - and few more pretty either.

"Each chapter of The Witcher 2 takes place in a different location, where you can't go back... We wanted to have these little stories within chapters," he asserts. "Not only going from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, but for you to feel like you've achieved something and you've entered some little story within each chapter."

And to underline just how much it has fleshed-out the side quest aspect, we get whisked off into the heart of the studio for a brief hands-off demonstration of one of the less spoilerific side missions. Set around halfway through the game's three acts, lead protagonist Geralt of Rivia finds himself playing detective after the gruesome discovery of numerous lacerated corpses of young men in a nearby village ravine. One of the poor unfortunates is found clutching a book of love poetry, written by Geralt's best buddy Dandelion, the local minstrel and all-round wordsmith.

Figuring that a dreaded succubus is behind the murders, Geralt and Dandelion quickly dispatch a few enemy stragglers en route and head for the home of a nearby suspect. Upon arrival, Dandelion reluctantly volunteers to venture into her underground lair at the risk of being ridden to death by the "hoofed hag" while Geralt lurks outside her den of iniquity. The things you do for your mates. But just when it looks like they've nailed their suspect, it transpires that someone under the succubus' spell is actually going around killing her lovers in a fit of jealousy. And to avoid even spoiling this tiny portion of the game, the curtain falls and we're shown no more. Sad times.

Even from this brief showing, though, there was plenty to glean from the sneak peek. First of all, we can expect quality over quantity in terms of the missions this time around, with a more coherent, enjoyable structure to follow. "In The Witcher, it was a problem, because you'd look at your journal; there'd be a thousand things to do," Bartkowicz notes. "It was hard to know which one single thing was going to get you closer to achieving your goal. I think what's driving RPGs is that the pace of the game is yours to control. It's really unlike linear shooters; it's more like reading a book."

"So, we don't have as many side quests in The Witcher 2 as we did before," he admits, revealing that the team decided to axe most of the forgettable 'kill five of this monster' missions that routinely clog up an RPG's quest arteries. "We do still have some of those - just not as many. Instead, we have more quests like this one, and it makes it more fun and more interesting."